Kat Flood is a magazine writer and editor who developed a devastating
tree disease in the early 1990s. After work on a Friday evening, she headed
to a salon for a shampoo and cut and, vulnerable while drinking a glass of
wine, opened a two-ton Vogue magazine to the back where ... the trees seized
her.

They were jeweled and beaded Christmas tree brooches, a dozen of them,
beautiful, bizarre, funky, elegant ... She wondered if such a tree might be
in a store at that moment. It was.

Seven-hundred and fifty tree pins later, Flood figures there might be as
many as 5,000 different ways to design a Christmas tree.
"If you'd have asked me
how many there possibly could be that night in the salon, I might have said
50," she guesses.

Her collection is one of the best in the country, which led her to write a
book on the world of holiday jewelry arbors, entitled The Jeweled Forest.
She
asked some of the top costume jewelry artists to create Christmas tree
brooches especially for the book, and that gave Flood the opportunity to
design a piece too. "With the Millennium prompting everyone to consider the
people they consider the best in various categories during the past 100
years,
I knew I thought Picasso was the greatest creator of art. I have more
books on his work than on any other artist, and when my husband and I hoofed
it to Italy and France on our honeymoon, we took a side trip to Vallauris to
visit the Galerie Madouras, where for many years Picasso created dramatic
yet
simple ceramic works. When I set out to design a Christmas tree pin, I
decided to make one as a sort of homage to Picasso. I call it The
Pinecasso!"

Other jewelry artists and designers who created trees exclusively for the
book included Larry Vrba, Paul Verrecchia, Mary Beth Burchardt-Bruder, John
Catalano, Steven Miners and Yai.

"The Internet has changed the whole face of collecting these minor works of
art," Flood says. "It used to be a seasonal pursuit, but collectors are on
the hunt every day of the year now. Still, things do heat up a bit from
September to December."